The Sculpture and Post-Studio (SPS) faculty work one on one with students to help develop each individual’s ideas and work based on individual, historical, and theoretical perspectives. Sculpture and Post-Studio Practice faculty represent varied points of view, however, each is thoroughly committed to helping develop students into creative, ambitious, and engaged artists.
Locational Practice and Field Opportunities
There are many ways to participate in field practice through the SPS curriculum. Most of our undergraduate courses have at least one unit focused on making artwork beyond the studio and in the field. These courses include Land and Environmental Art; Intervention, Exchange, and Duration; and Art and Social Practice. Every year MFA students organize a collaborative field project that has taken them to Wyoming, New Mexico and throughout Colorado. Students also have the opportunity to expand their practice into allied fields. For example, past projects include collaborations with researchers in environmental design, ornithology and museum studies. Additionally, our faculty often engage students in independent projects beyond campus. Our students have worked on-site in California, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and internationally in Italy, Bolivia, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Spain, and the Philippines. Shorter intensive field-based learning opportunities during winter and summer sessions are also integrated into the SPS curriculum.
The Art + Environments Field School
The Art + Environments Field School is an intensive off-campus summer program designed for students interested in the intersection of art and the environment. Directed by professor Richard Saxton, the Field School experience puts students in touch with various rural and remote landscapes and focuses on site and context-based approaches to art creation. While living and working together in the field and on the road, students get first-hand experience with rivers, streams and reservoirs, small towns, ecology and alpine research. Students can expect to spend the course in residence at the Mountain Research Station and create artworks exploring various mediums including photography, sculpture, and drawing - as well as dialogical projects, performative actions, and collaborative experiments.
The Field School session is open to both University of Colorado students and students from further afield. 6 academic credits are available at the undergraduate level (ARTS 4000) and graduate level (ARTS 5000). Registration begins each March for the following summer session. Please visit The Field School website for more information.
Area Faculty
SPS in the News
Ryan Everson
MFA, Sculpture & Post-Studio Practice, 2016
Artist Website
The connections and friendships made with other students and faculty were the most important. The uninterrupted time for studio work and the focus on creative process was important in developing both hard and soft skills while at CU.
I currently own Matchless Builds in Portland Oregon. Its a 12 person shop focused on making ideas a reality. We build fine furniture, cabinetry, fine art and pretty much anything imaginable. We are currently working on a large fine furniture project and some large scale public art pieces.
Aaron Treher
MFA, Sculpture & Post-Studio Practice, 2018
Artist Website
I chose CU for several different reasons. First, I was interested in a MFA program that had well known faculty that were leading the way in the growing territory of art practices that fall outside of the typical studio art model. Second, I was very interested in working with Yumi J. Roth and Richard Saxton whose practices incorporate a very wide range of influences. I had worked with countless volunteers and in a variety of contexts that all fell outside of what might be considered a normal arts practice. Naturally, I wanted to find a way to merge my arts practice with the community projects that I had been invested in. That’s when I came across the Sculpture and Post-Studio Practice area and the Rural Environments Field School at CU. I had applied to a number of other programs but the SPS area was exactly what I was looking for to grow my arts practice.
If I can give any reflection, it is about the importance of getting lost. I mean that in every sense of the phrase. Get lost in your work and forget that anything is happening in the world around you. Also, get lost in your concepts and realize that the ideas you are pursuing are so much more complex than you can ever expect to completely master in your time as a graduate student.
And most importantly, get lost in the land. Drive into the eastern plains of Colorado, turn off your GPS and follow the first dirt road you find. Drive until you don’t know East from West. Maybe then you can really find out where you are going.
My most recent public art project is a small collaborative project called the Street Light Survey Project and is funded by Boulder City’s Office of Arts and Culture. The Street Light Survey Project is a project that functions as an archive of urban ecology and street lights. The work is aimed specifically at creating an awareness of the interaction between artificial light, animals, and the human built environment. The project consists of two street signs, a biodiversity survey, an online database, and a corresponding sonic interpretation of the survey data. Located at a public street light that has a high rate of attraction to bugs—an official project sign, survey box, and biodiversity survey will guide residents to collect information and document insects at a designated site and other street lights.